Author . 




Title 



Class 



ka.^.^.s 



Imprint . 



Book V 



^ 



Teaching For 
God 

By Edward F. Garesche, S. J. 




\1\ 



Teaching For God 

by 
Edward F. Garesch^ S. J. 



Author of 
Your Interests Eternal, A Vadc ILecum for Nurses, etc. 



mw 



LOYOLA UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1076 Roosevelt Road, W., 

Chicago 



Imprimi potest ,V^ 

F. X. McMenamy, S.J. 

Pracpositiis Provincialis 

Nihil obstat 

John B. Fur'ay, S. J. 

Censor Deputatus 

Imprimatur 

fl& George W. Mundelein 

A rchie pise opus Chieagiensis 



NOV 26 IS20 
SCI.A604360 

COPYRIGHT, 1920 

BY 

Loyola University 
Chicago, III. 



DEDICATION 

To Our Blessed Lady, 
Seat of Wisdom 



TEACHING FOR GOD 



"The battles of the Church will be fought and 
won in the next generation chiefly in the field of 
Catholic education. We shall inherit the land if 
only we keep our little ones safe in the Church 
and give them the training that will enable them 
to grow up good Catholics and persevere in the 
practice of their faith. . . . The welfare of 
the schools is therefore the welfare of the 
Church. In helping the Catholic schools, in 
planning for them and aiding the increase of their 
efficiency we do a supreme service to the Church 
— and to the nation as well, for there is no in- 
fluence that makes for good citizenship more con- 
stantly and truly than does the training of the 
parish schools. 

"There are many ways in which we may aid 
Catholic education, but those who are its greatest 
benefactors are the teachers in the schools them- 
selves. The men and women who have entered 
the religious life to devote themselves to teaching 
have given to Catholic education its most effec- 
tive and permanent endowment. While others 
5 



b TEACHING FOR GOD 

have contributed money and possessions, they 
have given their own bodies and souls to be worn 
out in a hfetime of service, and the splendid work 
of the Catholic schools today is a monument to 
the fruitfulness of their self-sacrifice. What 
greater help can any one give to this cause than 
a whole lifetime spent in teaching?" 

We have presumed to quote the preceding 
paragraphs from a short article with this title, in 
• the book, "Your Interests Eternal," by way of 
introduction to a more expanded treatment of 
the same vital and important subject which we 
have been urged to undertake by judicious 
friends. Needless to remark, most of what is 
said may be applied with but slight change to 
the Catholic young man who is able and willing 
to teach for God in a religious society. Let us 
premise, however, that we should be very 
sorry if anything we are about to say in this 
little talk on a great subject should be taken 
as any disparagement of the work of those de- 
voted Catholic women who are teaching in the 
public schools. This is very far from our inten- 
tion. As matters stand it is some mitigation of 
the unfortunate condition that keeps more than 
half of all our Catholic children in the public 
schools, that so many Catholic women are teach- 



TEACHING FOR GOD / , 

ing them there. Besides, any one who has had 
even a sUght connection with the management 
of CathoHc charities and particularly with the 
organization of catechetical centers, vacation 
schools, leagues for catechetical instruction or 
sections for the same good work in Sodalities 
and Sodality Unions, must know that the most 
willing, faithful and competent volunteers are 
usually to be had from among the ranks of the 
Catholic teachers in the public schools. We 
premise this remark because we wish to avoid 
even the possibility of anyone's thinking that 
these reflections imply any disparagement of the 
Catholic women who are so valiantly trying to 
make the most of what is, at best, a trying situa- 
tion. I 

Neither do we wish to be understood as 
attacking the public school as such. If it were 
possible presently to secure for all the children 
of this nation the advantages of religious train- 
ing, then no effort would be too great and no 
sacrifice too heavy to be justified in such a 
cause. But as matters stand it will require, to 
say the least, a long campaign of educational 
propaagnda to convince the public at large of the 
need of any religious training in our schools. 
Meanwhile, state schools are a necessity for that 



8 



TEACHING FOR GOD 



part of the population who would otherwise not 
educate their children at all, much less give them 
any religious teaching. 

But what we have to say is meant for a very 
sacred object. It is to those Catholic young 
women that our words shall be addressed who 
have as yet not chosen their work in life, but are 
inclined, by gifts and natural leanings, to taking 
up teaching as their vocation. Many thousands 
of such Catholic girls, many of them graduates 
of our convent schools, enroll themselves each 
year in the teaching staff of the public schools 
throughout the country, and for some it is prac- 
tically their life work that they effer to the public 
schools when once they enter that service. Year 
after year they continue to teach, and it is only 
when they are unable any longer to discharge 
the hard and wearing duties of the class room 
that they leave it, having given literally the best 
years of their life to the public schools. Under 
the circumstances this service of so many de- 
voted Catholic teachers given to the public 
schools is, without question, an immense advan- 
tage to the public schools themselves. It is also 
a very notable service to the entire nation, for 
the future citizens of the land are thus brought 
in contact with women who live up to the tenets 



TEACHING FOR GOD y 

of a faith that shines out in their very Uves, 
though they are forbidden by the regulations of 
the schools where they teach from giving it any 
other expression. There can be no question, 
therefore, of the profit which the services of 
these Catholic teachers bring to the public 
schools themselves. 

But for the Catholic girl who is considering 
the choice of her life work, who wishes to decide 
where she can best serve her neighbor, her 
country and her God, and so best use her gifts 
and work out her salvation and perfection, there 
are some grave considerations which it is only 
just to put strongly and honestly before our 
Catholic graduates, and before all those who are 
just beginning a career of teaching in the public 
schools, so that they may realize a very moving 
situation and not miss sacred opportunities for 
want of having been informed in time. Let us 
therefore honestly sum up the situation from the 
viewpoint of the Catholic girls who may be 
suited for the immensely important and therefore 
very honorable and meritorious work of teach- 
ing. Here, then, are the simple facts. 

With great effort and much sacrifice the 
Church in the United States has built up a system 
of parish schools, independent of the public 



10 TEACHING FOR GOD 

schools system and devoted to the reHgious 
training of Cathohc children no less than to their 
secular education. It has been a heroic and 
arduous struggle. Out of the purses of the 
devoted poor has come much of the money that 
has gone to the building of the five thousand 
schools that house our million and a half of 
Catholic pupils. Pastors and people have worked 
together with singular generosity and self- 
sarifice to erect and maintain these parish 
schools. But the battle is only half won. In- 
deed, less than half of the Catholic children of 
school age are as yet in our Catholic schools. 
We have accommodations in our schools only for 
about half of our Catholic children, worse 
still, we have religious teachers for less than 
half. The returns of the census indicate that 
there are in the United States over three million 
Catholic children of school age. As we have 
said, reports from the Catholic schools indicate 
that one million five hundred of them are in our 
own institutions. The conclusion is forced on 
us that over one million five hundred Catholic 
children — more than half of the rising generation 
of Catholics, are not under distinctly Catholic 
influence during the most important part of their 



TEACHING FOR GOD 



11 



lives, the time of their training and of the form- 
ing of their character while at school. 

A very great deal still remains to be done on 
all hands, therefore, to supply to all our Catholic 
children that religious training which is their 
birthright. More schools must be built, more 
rooms provided, but in particular more religious 
teachers must be secured to care for these little 
ones and for the older children too, and to give 
them a thoroughly Catholic training. Of these 
requirements the securing of the teachers is 
without doubt the most important and in some 
ways the most difficult. At the present time 
nearly every one of those devoted sisterhoods 
which are engaged in teaching desires very much 
to have many more recruits to the number of 
their staff of teachers. Calls are coming to them 
from many parishes for more teachers, they are 
being besought by many other pastors to open 
new parish schools, and in many cases they 
cannot respond to these appeals because they 
have not enough Sisters to supply all these needs. 

Observe, too, that it is the devotion of the 
Catholic sisterhoods which is above all else the 
endowment of the Catholic schools. Non- 
Catholic institutions are supported at the public 
cost or they have immense sums of money 



12 TEACHING FOR GOD 

invested at interest whose revenues support and 
endow the school and pay its teachers. But the 
Cathohc schools have a much more noble and 
precious endowment in the unselfish, unpaid and 
life-long service vowed to the holy cause of 
Catholic education by the nuns who teach in our 
schools. Were it not for the free offering of all 
this devoted effort for Catholic education, it 
would be impossible for the Catholic schools to 
subsist on the very moderate revenues which now 
support them. To employ secular teachers, who 
would have to receive a salary sufficient to main- 
tain them and perhaps their families, would entail 
an expense which our Catholic schools system as 
now constituted could never bear. Religious 
poverty, the fact that our teaching sisterhoods 
live in community and practice holy economies 
for the love of God, is the greatest endowment 
of Catholic education. So true is this, that an 
eminent ecclesiastic has shown that if tomorrow 
in one of our great cities with a large Catholic 
population, the Sisters' schools were closed and 
the Catholic children given to the state to educate, 
the city would have to expend such a vast sum 
for the building of the schools and the additional 
salaries for secular teachers that the proportion 
which Catholics alone would have to pay of the 



TEACHING FOR GOD 13 

increase of taxes necessary for the teaching of 
the CathoUc children thus thrown upon the care 
of the state would be more than the entire cost 
of the present upkeep of the parish schools ! 

With these facts in mind, consider the present 
situation. More than one million and a half of 
our Catholic children are now being educated by 
the state. The civil government, forbidding all 
religious instruction in the schools, takes the 
taxes of the Catholic people, uses them to erect 
large and commodious schools, employs Catholic 
girls as teachers, and then is vigilant to see that 
these Catholic teachers shall not give the least 
instruction in their religion to any of the Catholic 
children thus put in their charge. Surely this is 
a painful situation indeed from the Catholic 
viewpoint. How much better it would be if these 
Catholic teachers, still devoting their lives to the 
work of teaching, were able to instruct their 
Catholic charges not only in the elements of 
secular education but at the same time in the 
saving doctrines of the faith ! How many 
Catholic teachers, now giving their services to 
the state in the public . shools, would, if these 
circumstances and the greatness of the need 
were brought to their attention, gladly listen to 
the call of divine grace to become teachers for 



14 TEACHING FOR GOD 

God, would enter a religious sisterhood and 
devote their lives to the religious as well as the 
secular instruction of Catholic children. 

It is this reflection that we wish to bring very 
clearly and strongly home to all those young 
folk in particular who are now thinking of taking 
up teaching as their life work. Why not teach 
for God? Why not do this admirable and most 
meritorious work as our holy Mother the 
Churh means it to be undertaken, as she desires 
it to be accomplished? The most serious need 
nowadays is for recruits to the teaching Sister- 
hoods. Many and devoted as are the nuns now 
toiling in our parish schools, a yet greater num- 
ber — twice as many indeed — are required to do 
the work of the Church. Numerous as are the 
applicants for admission to the teaching Sister- 
hoods, twice as many are desired to give all our 
Catholic children without exception the benefits 
of a thoroughly Catholic education. We repeat, 
those devoted Catholic women who are teaching 
in the public schools are doing a great service 
to the state, but not the greatest service. The 
same effort which they are expending now, if 
put into the work of the Sisterhoods in parish 
schools would bear larger fruit. If they were 
teaching entirely for God how much more 



TEACHING FOR GOD 17 

directly would their efforts tell for the good of 
souls and for the glory of the Most High ! 

The Catholic teacher who is employed in the 
public schools has indeed a wholesome influence 
over her charges by the mere goodness of her 
character and by that intangible influence which 
every good woman has over a child. But she 
is forbidden by the very terms of her contract 
from teaching even her Catholic charges a word 
about her and their religion. Her Catholicity 
must not be in evidence when she is in school. 
She must not introduce into her instructions 
those holy illustrations, those gracious allusions 
to divine things which it would be natural for 
her to mention to the receptive and innocent 
children by whom she is surrounded. She must 
refrain herself very carefully from saying any- 
thing that could be construed as the teaching of 
reliigous truth, and if she does give way to her 
own pious heart and mingle divine with human 
learning she does it in defiance of strict rules 
and she is likely at any time to be called to 
account for violating one of the fundamental 
principles of the system of public instruction. 
It is only custom which has made us callous to 
the anomaly of this situation. That Catholic 
teachers, whose salaries may be said to be paid 



18 TEACHING FOR GOD 

from the taxes collected from Catholic citizens, 
are forbidden to teach to those children the faith 
which is their dearest inheritance when this 
could be done without harm, but rather with 
great profit to their secular education is one of 
the strange abuses w^hich have grown up amongst 
us and which we do not sufficiently notice be- 
cause custom has made us too familiar with 
them. 

The Catholic teacher in the public schools 
cannot even use the holy influence of the Faith 
to train the character and to safeguard the 
morals of her charges, even of her Catholic 
pupils. She knows that the most powerful 
motives to deter from wrong and to confirm in 
goodness are found in the teaching of the 
Church. She sometimes sees with regret that 
even her Catholic pupils^ — perhaps especially her 
Catholic pupils, because they come from poor 
families or are neglected at home, need the 
moral strength, the seriousness and stability that 
come from Catholic teaching and exhortation. 
But she dare not, without violating the rules of 
the school, say a word about these things to her 
pupils. Her lips and her heart are sealed by the 
rule which forbids the teaching of religion in the 
public schools. 



TEACHING FOR GOD 19 

Let US proceed in this same line of thought. 
Not only does the teacher in the public schools 
find herself forbidden to teach her religion, but 
even the greater personal influence which she 
might have over her Catholic pupils is impaired 
by this prohibition. Perhaps many of them 
hardly know that she is a Catholic. At least, if 
they themselves are careless or ill instructed in 
the faith, the circumstance of her Catholicity is 
likely not to have much influence upon them. 

Compare these disadvantages, you who are 
just now pondering over the way in which you 
may best live your life for the service of God 
and of your neighbor, with the advantages of the 
Catholic w^oman who has decided to teach for 
God, and has consecrated herself to that holy 
service by entering the religious state in a 
teaching Sisterhood. Clothed with the habit 
whih tells even the smallest child of her dedica- 
tion to the Most High and her espousal of 
Christ, the teaching Sister, even when she is 
silent, speaks eloquently to the pupils under her 
care and to all who see her go about her duties, 
of religion and of heavenly things. How many 
a man and woman, tossed by the storms of life 
and broken and ruined, wdio have departed very 
far from the teaching of their religious in- 



20 TEACHING FOR GOD 

structors of old days, have been brought back to 
their duties by the mere sight of the Sister in 
the hospital, whose habit vividly recalled to their 
minds the memory of the teacher of their child- 
hood days w^hom they had watched with 
reverence as she stood in the class room, wear- 
ing the livery of God. 

In one of the most famous of the public hos- 
pitals of France, an infidel government strictly 
forbade the Sisters of Charity, who were allowed 
to visit the sick, ever to mention even the name 
of God, muh less to suggest to the patients to 
go to confession and communion. There was 
thought at first of withdrawing the nuns from 
a place where they were not allowed to speak 
the name of their Mlaster. But the superior said 
"No. The mere sight of the nuns will suggest 
to many to ask for the sacraments." And so it 
proved. As the religious passed to and fro 
through the wards, many a poor fellow, re- 
minded by that holy garb of the teachers of his 
innocent boyhood and recalling their lessons of 
religion, called out for a priest and made his 
peace with God. The mere sight of a religious 
teacher impresses the susceptible and impression- 
able hearts of children beyond words. One can 
see their reverence in the expression of those 



TEACHING FOR GOD 21 

wide-open eyes with which they follow every 
motion of the nun who has care of them. 

Again, everything in the training and life of 
the religious aids her to produce upon the 
children under her care impressions of goodness 
and religion. Her own life is so to say saturated 
with the supernatural. Living in community, in 
the company of others who are dedicated in the 
same entire and perfect manner to the exclusive 
service of God, she thinks and feels the things 
that are of Christ with an habitual constancy 
which perhaps escapes even her own observation 
so much of a second nature does it become. 
Hence there is about her as it were an atmo- 
sphere of religion, and pious allusions, the most 
natural in the world and therefore most in- 
sinuating to the mind and heart of the child, fall 
from her lips as plentifully as, whenever she 
spoke, there fell from the lips of the enchanted 
princess in the fairy story diamonds and pearls. 
"Let us go forth and preach" said St. Francis 
cf Assisi to the Brother of his order, and the 
two walked forth in silence and recollection 
through the streets of the city and back again 
towards their own convent. "When are we to 
begin to preach" asked the simple Brother. "We 
have been most eloquent, all the way," answered 



22 



TEACHING FOR GOD 



the Saint. "Everyone who saw us could not help 
but think of God." One no longer sees men in 
religious garb walking through the streets of 
our American cities. But the habits of religious 
women are still eloquent there. So, too, do the 
lives they lead dispose them to speak of God 
and of the things divine. 

The religious teacher has besides at her com- 
mand in a supreme degree all those powerful 
interior influences for the formation of char- 
acter, the building up of goodness in the heart 
of the child, that religion only can afford. The 
grace of God works with her, because it is God 
Who has called her to this work and it is for 
God that she is teaching. She can impress upon 
the child indelible memories which will survive 
even a long life of sin and recur even to the 
sinner at that hour of death when they are 
efficacious to help to conversion and final 
penitence. 

Besides, it is the chief business of the religious 
teacher to teach religion and train the character 
of her pupils along the lines of resemblance to 
the character of Christ. Religious instruction is 
therefore with her not an incident in her teach- 
ing but its chief object, not an occasional digres- 
sion, still less a surreptitious interlude, but the 



TEACHING FOR GOD 23 

professed and constant object of her life. This 
again makes a great difference between the work 
of the CathoUc who goes to teach in the pubhc 
schools and the one who dedicates herself to the 
holy task of teaching for God in the ranks of a 
religious sisterhood. Granted, as is indeed often 
the case, that two Catholic women of nearly 
equal piety, good training and personal earnest- 
ness adopt, one the vocation of a teaching sister 
the other the profession of a teacher in the 
public schools ; which, all else being equal, is 
likely to do more good to the Catholic children 
under her care? Which is likely better to use 
the precious opportunities that the profession of 
a teacher gives for molding young hearts to 
goodness and shaping young lives to happiness, 
here and hereafter? 

We put the constrast thus strongly and truly, 
let us repeat once more, not to disparage the 
work of the noble Catholic women who are novv^ 
teaching in the public schools, nor to discourage 
them about their occupation. It is rather for the 
sake of the Catholic girl who is looking about 
her for her life work that we think it right thus 
sharply to contrast the opportunities, merit and 
fruits of teaching for God as compared with 
those of teaching for the state. For it seems 



24 TEACHING FOR GOD 

certain that there are hundreds of CathoUc 
women who go each year from CathoUc schools 
to state normal schools and thence to the service 
of the public school system, who are really 
called by Almighty God to the holy vocation of 
teahing in the parish schools, and who would find 
in some one of the teaching Sisterhoods the 
greatest peace and happiness on earth, the most 
fruitful field for the exercise of their powers, 
the finest means of influencing the coming 
generation of Catholics, a secure service of God 
and man in this life and the way to extreme 
glory and happiness hereafter. 

So much for the contrast between the vocation 
of a nun who teaches for God and the calling 
of a Catholic girl who teaches for the state, 
from the viewpoint of the results which may be 
expected from their efforts for their pupils. 
When one considers the life, the personal ad- 
vantages, the individual rewards of the one and 
the other way of teaching, the contrast becomes 
all the more striking. 

To begin with, then, let us trace the course of 
a Catholic girl who takes up the career of a state 
teacher, enters a normal school and prepares 
herself to receive a teacher's certificate in the 
service of the public schools, She passes through 



TEACHING FOR GOD 25 

the normal classes successfully, graduates with 
honor, and gets employment at the good pleasure 
of the school board in some city or country 
school. For some teachers their work is indeed 
only a temporary occupation. They have made 
up their mind that their happiness and usefulness 
will be best ensured in the holy state of matri- 
mony, and when the youth appears upon their 
horizon to whom they wish to entrust their fate 
they leave the school for the home and teach no 
more except their own little ones. 

But many Catholic teachers in public schools 
really enter into a life's work when they graduate 
from normal and take a teacher's position. For 
year after year with conscientious effort they 
give the best that is in them to the task of educa- 
tion, under the regulations of the school board 
and subject to its orders and prohibitions. They 
take satisfaction no doubt in their work else they 
would not continue in it. But at the end of a 
term of years, longer or shorter as the case may 
be, they find themselves beginning to grow old. 
All they have received from the state meanwhile 
is a livelihood, sometimes meagre enough, par- 
ticularly nowadays. They have done many good 
works, they have helped the poor, they have 
made the best let us say of what may h^ye been a 



26 TEACHING FOR GOD 

difficult situation. But now they find themselves 
on the threshold of old age, when their powers 
begin to fail, when they are more easily tired, 
when they foresee that in a little while they will 
have to give up teaching and rest. 

To many a one among the pious, faithful 
Catholic women who have given their best years 
to teaching in the public schools there comes at 
the last a certain sadness. She has done well, but 
she could have done better, teaching for God. 
She has done good in the world, but she might 
have done so much more good with equal effort 
in the Catholi schools. It is no fault of hers that 
she did not follow a religious vocation — the idea 
was never presented to her, the opportunity 
never brought to her realization. But if she had 
become aware of a religious vocation and had 
turned her steps to the novitiate instead of to the 
normal school her paths would have lain in far 
other places. She has nothing to repent of, but 
she has often something to regret ! 

On the other hand, what Catholic woman who 
has spent her whole life teaching for God will 
suffer this loneliness and regret in her declining 
years as she waits with folded hands or busy 
with easy tasks for the approach of death? Her 
days have passed in the most blessed occupation, 



TEACHING FOR GOD 27 

the most meritorious toil that can fall to the lot 
of woman. She has been devoted body and soul 
not merely to teaching, which is in itself an 
honorable and excellent labor, but to teaching 
for God, devoting her every faculty to that 
work of instructing many unto justice for which 
the Holy Scriptures are the assurance that those 
who do it shall shine like stars for all eternity. 
The children whom she has sent out into the 
world well grounded in the faith come back as 
sterling Catholic men and women to tell her that 
the words she spoke to them of God and faith 
and service are bearing fruit in their hearts and 
in their lives. They send their own children to 
the school where they had lessons from her so 
that her sisters in religion may give to their 
children the training they prize for themselves. 
Her children, not of her flesh but of her spirit, 
rise up and call her blessed. 

The decay of her faculties, the coming on of 
old age, does not strike a chill of dismay to the 
heart of her who has all her life long been teach- 
ing for God. She is in the midst of her own 
family, the religious household for which she has 
spent the vigor of her youth, the strength of her 
maturity and which is bound to cherish her with 
honor until the end by the double obligation of 



28 TEACHING FOR GOD 

religious love and of filial gratitude. Grown 
accustomed to love the quiet order of the house- 
hold of Christ, seeing her own youth renewed in 
the young virgins who are ever coming with new 
enthusiasm to offer their lives in the same 
service in which she has spent her own, she is 
assured that the work she loves will go on and 
prosper even after she has gone, and the task that 
falls from her aged hands will be caught up and 
continued by younger hands but no less devoted 
and consecrated to her beloved task of teaching 
for God. 

So, in tranquil peace, among her own sisters 
who minister to her to the end, in the daily com- 
pany of the Blessed Eucharist, with the daily 
communion of the Lord to console the weakness 
of her old age and fortify her spirit for its last 
journey, the teacher for God sees the approach 
of infirmity and of dissolution without regi*et 
and without fear. She has dwelt for many long 
years under the shadow of the tabernacle. She 
has kept white the innocent souls of many little 
children. Priests it may be are among the 
number of those who look up to her as the 
teacher of their childhood. From among the 
little girls that she has taught and guarded have 
come devoted nuns, who bear on the white flame 



TEACHING FOR GOD 29 

of faith and love which they have received from 
her hand, and kindle therewith the ready hearts 
of other generations of Catholic children. Life 
for her has been very full of merit and consola- 
tion, death comes gently and without fear, 
opening to her a long-wished-for portal. How 
blissful will be her eternity, when God shall 
gather about her the throngs of souls to whom 
she has given perhaps the first and most lasting 
lessons of the faith and goodness which brought 
them safely to heaven. 

Surely so blessed and desirable a life as this, 
so secure, so rich in opportunities, so blessed 
with means of merit and of well-doing, deserves 
the most thoughtful consideration of every 
Catholic girl who feels inclined towards the life 
of a teacher and who is not overmuch attached 
to the things of this world nor convinced that 
for her the state of matrimony is the plainest 
way to heaven. The teaching Sisterhoods, upon 
whose devoted shoulders rests the greater part 
of the work of Catholic education and whose 
self-sacrifice and frugality have made possible 
the gi'eat system of Catholic schools in the 
United States, are most anxious to receive 
greater and greater numbers of candidates for 
their novitiates, because they are constantly 



3.0 TEACHING FOR GOD 

being applied to for more and more teaching 
Sisters and yet have hardly enough to do the 
work they have already undertaken. More than 
a million and a half of our Catholic children, 
the most precious heritage of the Church and 
the substance of the coming generation of 
Catholics, are unable to receive a Catholic train- 
ing because all the teaching Sisters now working 
in the schools are barely able to take care of the 
million and a half Catholic pupils already in their 
class rooms. How can any Catholic girl, know- 
ing the need and her opportunity, free to dispose 
of her life as she wills, able to make the 
sacrifices which the teaching vocation requires, 
fitted for the life of a teaching nun, remain 
indifferent to this appeal ? The Sisters already 
toiling in the schools, some of whom were her 
own instructresses and have given her the 
strength of faith and purity of heart to which 
they now appeal, are stretching towards her 
hands of entreaty. They say little perhaps for 
fear of preventing the call of the Holy Spirit. 
They wait for her own intelligence and gener- 
osity to cooperate with the grace of God and 
bring her to their aid. But their very silence 
and the weariless efforts they are making to 
teach. classes too large for their strength is more 



TEACHING FOR GOD 33 

eloquent than a persistent pleading. They ask 
her to give freely what she has freely received 
and help them to train other generations of 
Catholic children as she herself has been trained 
in goodness and in the faith. 

How well it were that these thoughts should 
be brought to the mind of every Catholic girl 
who is inclined to teaching as a life work ! How 
many a one of the pious, self-sacrificing and 
devoted Catholic girls who have in the past gone 
to teach in public schools would give the apple 
of her eye to have been made to realize these 
truths when she was making her decision and 
giving her young strength and fresh enthusiasm 
to a life work ! The fields of Catholic education 
are indeed white for the harvest. The superiors 
of religious institutes look with anxious eyes to 
the distance, hoping for more and yet more 
recruits to swell the great but still insufficient 
number of laborers in the harvesting of Catholic 
youth for God. We should work and pray that 
not a single one of those chosen souls to whom 
God has given the requisites for a religious 
vocation and the talents to be a Catholic teacher 
may miss her vocation. Every one is sorely 
needed if we are to do our duty by the coming 



34 TEACHING FOR GOD 

generation of Catholics and save our children 
for the faith. 

"If we Catholics could but keep our own 
children, the natural increase of Catholic fam- 
ilies," said a prudent and thoroughly well- 
informed member of the iVmerican hierarchy 
not long since, "we should in no very long time 
make America Catholic." The Catholic families, 
especially the poorer ones, are blessed with many 
children. The immigrant families especially are 
very numerous in their offspring. What a 
tragedy it is, that while God blesses us with 
many children, whose multitudes will soon fill 
the land because the others outside the Church 
are so rapidly decreasing and dying out, we 
cannot keep the Catholic children for the 
Church but must see them pour into public 
schools, rush to non-Catholic settlement houses, 
fall by many thousands into the hands of 
proselytizing influences or influences which make 
for indifferentism, and go to swell, not indeed 
the ranks of non-Catholic denominations, but 
the pitiful company of those who have no faith. 
It is said that seventy million of the people of 
the United States belong to no Church, attend 
no religious services. A vast number of these 
have never even been baptized. But a very large 



TEACHING FOR GOD '35 

number, too, are the children of Cathohc fam- 
ihes who never received proper training in the 
faith, w^ho drifted av^^ay from all Catholic 
influence, v^ere educated in the state schools and 
are thus quite cheated of their Catholic birth- 
right, some of them Catholics only in name, 
others not Catholics at all but part of the floatsam 
and jetsam of unbelief, the dark majority of 
unbelievers in our once Christian land. Hear 
the cry of the children, O you girls of Catholic 
faith, clean of heart, firm of v^ill, strong of body 
and resolute of soul! Turn from the world and 
its dubious prospects to the vocation of a teacher 
for God. Save that part of Catholic childhood 
which God has left to your care. It is a vocation 
without regrets, a clear way of service, a hap- 
piness on earth and a glory in heaven. How 
much the pitiful throngs of Catholic children 
need you ! 

In conclusion, let us clear up one difficulty, 
remove, if may be, one obstacle that seems so 
often to stand in the way of Catholic girls who 
might easily devote themselves to the most 
blessed and meritorious work of teaching for 
God. Let us dwell briefly on the true nature and 
actual requirements of a religious vocation. "I 
would like to be a nun and teach for God, but 



36 TEACHING FOR GOD 

I do not know whether I have a vocation. If I 
were only sure that I had a vocation I should 
be glad to go." How many a Catholic maiden 
has said such things, and hesitated and pondered 
while precious years flew by, and has ended at 
last by never going to teach for God. A clear and 
true notion of the religious calling would have 
broken this chill indecision right speedily and 
sent her running in the paths of peace. Let us 
try, then, to explain to such a one the require- 
ments and signs of God's call to the religious 
life. 

The religious life is a great and splendid fact 
in the glorious life of the Church on earth. It 
is inexpressibly sublime in its nature and in the 
fruits it produces for the glory of God and the 
salvation of souls. It is a moral miracle, raising 
ordinary Catholicc men and women to heights 
of devotion and merit of which they would 
otherwise be incapable, fruitful in good works 
beyond the ordinary powers of man. At the 
same time this religious life is not an extra- 
ordinary nor rare phenomenon. It is part of 
the daily life of the Church. Each year thou- 
sands upon thousands of Catholic men and 
women, most of them in their first youth, most 
of them of average talents, piety, good will, 



TEACHING FOR GOD 37 

embrace this life of religious consecration and 
enter the novitiates of the various orders or 
confraternities, there to discover if they are 
called and able to follow a religious vocation. 
These thousands of Catholic young people 
who thus each year become religious are not 
informed of their vocation by the message of 
an angel nor by the sound of a voice from 
heaven. Nothing extraordinary in the way of 
supernatural manifestations ever comes into the 
lives of most of them. They are led to religion 
by ordinary ways. The process is something as 
follows: Our Lord Jesus Christ, when He was 
on earth) gave to His Apostles and Disciples and 
through them to us all, certain counsels or pieces 
of advice. This advice was given quite generally 
to all Christians, and our Lord said : '*He who 
can take, let him take it." In other words, it is 
such good advice that it would be well for every- 
one if he could take it, but as a matter of fact 
everyone will not be able to take it for one 
reason or another. Still, if one can take it, our 
Lord advises him to do so. And what was this 
advice, the counsel of Christ? First, to sell all 
we have and give it to the poor and come, follow 
Him. That is, to give up all property and 
possessions of our own, to take the vow of 



38 TEACHING FOR GOD 

poverty, and to imitate most closely in this way 
that Savior who said of Himself that He was 
more poor than the foxes, who had their holes, 
or than the birds of the air, who had nests, 
whereas He, the Son of Man, had not whereon 
to lay His head. Second, to give up the lawful 
pleasures and consolations of family life, to take 
the vow of chastity and live in the holy state of 
religious virginity, making one's self a virgin all 
days for the Kingdom of Heaven. Third, to give 
up one's own will and take the vow of religious 
obedience, living in community subject to a 
superior and doing for the love of God whatever 
work is assigned by those whom the Church 
places in charge of the household of Christ. 
Our Lord, in the Counsels of Perfection, as they 
are called, so advises all His followers without 
making any limitation or restriction except this, 
that those who can take this advice, let them 
take it. 

But who can take these counsels, and are 
therefore invited and advised by our Lord to do 
so? In other words, how are we to know 
whether this wide and universal invitation of 
Christ is to be applied to this or that particular 
individual? Because obviously not everyone 
can accept His invitation or take the counsels of 



TEACHING FOR GOD 39 

perfection which He has given. Before one can 
take these counsels it is necessary fii-st of all that 
one should learn of the religious life, appreciate 
its blessings and realize that the general invita- 
tion of Christ may apply to himself. This is 
the first step which the average Catholic young 
man or woman who enters the religious life takes 
toward the novitiate. At some time or another, 
perhaps during the school days when the 
example of devoted nuns impressed the young 
mind and moved the childish heart to admiration, 
perhaps after school was over when some word 
of advice or instruction called the candidate's 
attention to the excellence of the religious state, 
the interest of the future novice is aroused, her 
heart stirred with the desire to embrace the life 
of the counsels, and she wishes to learn more of 
this life and gradually conceives the thought 
that perhaps she herself may be called by God 
to be a religious. 

This is the grace of God, working in the mind 
and heart of one whom He has specially called 
to embrace the religious state. God's grace has 
the effect of enlightening the intelligence to see 
v/hat He desires we should realize, and of warm- 
ing and strengthening the will to embrace it. The 
grace of religious vocation, therefore, makes one 



40 TEACHING FOR GOD 

realize and understand the loveliness of the life 
of the counsels, its merit and its holiness and 
helps one to desire to embrace it. There is ques- 
tion here of the understanding and the will, not 
of the feelings and inclinations. Many of those 
who follow a religious vocation do not feel at 
all like leaving home and friends and entering 
the novitiate. It is their intelligence and their 
will, strengthened by the grace of God, that 
carry them into this holy way of service. 

When one has once seen the attractiveness of 
the religious life from the viewpoint of heaven 
and eternity, the thought naturally enters the 
mind: "Can I aspire to this blessed life?" This 
question is often put thus: "Have I a religious 
vocation?" When you have gotten this far, that 
you appreciate the blessings of the religious life, 
and wish to know whether you individually can 
aspire to it, the decision as to whether or not 
you have a vocation becomes very simple. It 
reduces itself to this: "Have you the qualities 
of mind and body that will fit you for such a life, 
and have you the good will to enter the novitiate 
and to persevere in the life of a religious?" If 
both these questions can be answered in the 
affirmative then you may be sure you have a 
religious vocation and you can safely — and you 



TEACHING FOR GOD 41 

will if you are wise — ^nter the novitiate of a 
religious order or congregation and begin that 
heavenly life of which God in His merciful 
providence has opened the door to you. 

So you see that the process by which God 
leads you to religion is a very simple one. He 
first gives you the necessary health and talent and 
education. Then He brings to your attention, by 
the reading of a book or the words of a priest 
or religious, or in some other ordinary way, that 
you are fitted for this life and that His general 
advice and invitation is specially meant to be 
taken and followed by you. Finally He pours 
His grace into your mind and heart to help you 
to see clearly your calling and opportunity and 
to will earnestly to follow Him, in poverty, 
chastity and obedience. You then take advice, 
preferably from some wise priest who has been 
your confessor or knows you well enough to 
judge whether you have the qualities and good 
will to persevere in religion, you make applica- 
tion to the Sisterhood to which you feel most 
drawn by your reason and God's grace, and you 
enter the novitiate, there to receive instruction in 
the way of life you are choosing, to consider still 
more carefully whether you are suited to it, and 
to give the superiors of the Sisterhood an oppor- 



42 TEACHING FOR GOD 

tunity of judging whether you are suited to their 
society and will be likely to succeed and perse- 
vere therein. There is thus no question of a voice 
from heaven, or of such an interior illumination 
and attraction as is almost equivalent to a certain 
assurance that God calls you to religion. No, 
He has long ago issued the general invitation to 
all who can do so to follow Him most closely 
in poverty, chastity and obedience. Wlhen He 
gives anyone the necessary qualities of body and 
soul to follow Him thus and besides pours His 
grace into mind and heart to make one see that 
this is the best life, and sincerely will to embrace 
it, this is an individual vocation — the applying 
by God's providence of the general invitation of 
the counsels to an individual soul. 

The Catholic girl, therefore, who has a bent 
for teaching, who is devout and good and has 
no one depending on her with whom she is bound 
to stay, such as an old mother or father whom 
there is no one else to care for, may well hope 
that she has those qualities of mind and body, 
that light and strength of the grace of God in 
her mind and heart, which constitute for her a 
reliigous vocation. How wise will she be if she 
seeks prudent advice, chooses a teaching Sister- 
hood and enters on the holy vocation of teaching 



TEACHING FOR GOD 43 

for God. She need not be anxious about her 
vocation, for she will have the time of the 
novitiate to weigh seriously and determine surely 
that she is fitted for this holy life. When that 
period is over she will receive the necessary 
training for the work she is to do. Thence- 
forward her life will be hidden in God, her work 
will be all for Him, her days will be devoted 
utterly to the sublime task of training young 
minds and hearts, instructing them unto justice. 
How blessed a life, how happy a death, how 
secure an eternity will be hers ! 

What we have said of teaching for God may, 
of course, be applied with some slight changes 
of thought to many other holy activities to which 
girls can devote their lives for God and in His 
special and intimate service, instead of remaining 
in the world where the same effort and labor on 
their part will be so poorly repaid. The work 
of caring for the sick, of ministering to children, 
the helpless and the destitute, the many spheres 
of woman's work which are being done so well 
and with such unfailing care and loving perfec- 
tion by nuns, appeal each one for more recruits, 
more laborers in the harvests of God. The 
demands on the Sisterhoods are growing con- 
stantly, the field of their work is widening day 



44 TEACHING FOR GOD 

by day, they need many busy hands and loving 
hearts to carry on and expand the works they 
do for the honor of God's majesty and for the 
good of souls. How many a Catholic girl, going 
out from school to seek her life-work, would 
gladly turn aside into the welcoming doors of 
the novitiate and do all her work entirely for 
God if only she knew and could realize the 
beauty and holiness of the nun's vocation and the 
eager welcome that is ready for her in the house- 
hold of God and from the Heart of Christ. 

Many of these good and devout Catholic girls, 
we know it well, cannot, for one reason or 
another, accept the invitation of Christ. For 
some a feebleness of health makes this vocation 
impossible. For others there is some sacred tie 
of duty which keeps them in the world. Nowa- 
days the girl is often the breadwinner of the 
family and cannot leave her home until her aged 
parents are consoled and supported to the end, 
because there is no one else to care for them. 
Others still feel that the state of matrimony is 
the way God has chosen for their sanctification. 
For such as these God has put special graces 
along the way of a holy and self-sacrificing life 
in the world. But to those Catholic girls who 
have not any tie nor obstacle that keeps them in 



TEACHING FOR GOD 45 

the world, whose hearts are free and who have 
all the needful qualities of body and mind for 
the religious life, to these we say: "Consider 
whether to you also Christ does not address that 
moving invitation: "If thou would'st be perfect, 
go, sell all thou hast and give it to the poor and 
come, follow Me!" 

And if it seems to you that there is some 
probability that you are suited to this holy voca- 
tion of the religious life, do not delay to take 
prudent advice, to pray fervently, think deeply, 
judge sincerely as you will wish to have done at 
the moment of your death. Do not put off either 
the decision or the carrying out of your good 
resolve. You need not be certain with an 
absolute certainty that you are called, enough if 
you have present reasons for entering the 
novitiate and making the trial. There you and 
others will discover finally whether you are in 
all ways suited to the life. It is sad to see any- 
one put off and put off this holy decision while 
the precious years run by that might have been 
spent in the household of Christ, sad to find that 
sometimes youth passes by in indecision, the 
going is put off, the prime of life slips by, and 
at last the acceptable time is gone and the blessed 
opportunity vanished. 



46 TEACHING FOR GOD 

Let US hope that these reflections, helped by 
the grace of God, may touch the heart of many 
a CathoUc maiden as she stands on the threshold 
of active life and meditates how she may best 
serve God, help her fellow men and save her 
soul. It is often said, sometimes very lightly, 
that such a one can do so much good in the 
world, that there is so much need of pious 
layfolk, that one can find many holy works to 
do even though one does not go to a convent. 
All this is quite true. We have not, in all that 
we have said, cast any slur on the holy and 
devoted women who, in the world, are gloriously 
fighting the battles of the faith and doing the 
work of God. For one reason or another they 
have not been able to enter religion, yet many 
of them live almost the lives of religious in the 
world. We have spoken elsewhere of their life, 
its difficulties and consolations, under the title of 
"The Third Vocation." But it is a question here 
of better, not merely of good, and the wisdom of 
Christ assures us that it is better for those who 
can take His counsels of perfection to take them, 
better to serve Him in the poverty, chastity and 
obedience of religious life than to lead even a 
holy life in the world. , 

There will alwavs be multitudes of devoted 



TEACHING FOR GOD 47 

Catholic women in the world, pious and edifying, 
working out their salvation in the way in which 
providence has placed them. But the Cluirch 
now needs sorely more and more of those other 
Catholic women who have made the great 
sacrifice and given themselves entirely to Christ 
in the complete consecration of the religious life. 
Just at this present time, with the development 
of our school system, the increased demands on 
the Sisterhoods, the growth of educational re- 
quirements, the million and a half or more of 
Catholic children w^aiting for Catholic training, 
there is an especial need for an even greater 
number of Catholic girls who will see betimes 
the greatness of their opportunity, who will heed 
the appeal of the Heart of Christ, and come to 
His household to devote their consecrated lives 
to the sublime work of teaching for God. 



OTHER BOOKS BY FATHER GARESCHE 



PROSE 

Your Neighp.or and You. Our dealings with those 
al)Oiit ns. 16 mo. Price, $1.25. 

Your Interests Eternal. Our service to our Heavenly 
Father. 16 mo. Price, $1.25. 

Your Soul''s Salvation. Instructions on personal holi- 
ness. 16 mo. Price, $1.25. 

The Most Beloved Woman. The prerogatives and 
glories of the Blessed Mother of God. 16 mo. 
Price, $1.25. 

Children of Mary. Talks to Sodalists. 16 mo. Price, 
$1.00. 

The Things Immortal. Spiritual thoughts for every- 
day reading. 16 mo. Price, $1.25. 

Your Own Heart. Some helps to understand it. 16 
mo. Price, $1.25. 

The Paths OF Goodness. (In Preparation). Some aids 
to Spiritual Progress. 16 mo. Price, $1.25. 

Life's Lessons. (In Preparation). 16 mo. Price, $1.25. 

POEMS 

The Four Gates. Thoughts for every season. Price, 
$1.50. 

The World and the Waters. Price, $1.50. 

War Mothers. Poems on the Great War. Price, $0.60. 

To Margaret Mary in Heaven. An Ode to the Apostle 
of the Sacred Heart. Price, $0.50. 

Heavenly Waysides. (In Preparation). 






mV i-'ij i^'f 



